Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Monday, July 10, 2006
Right On, Sister
While I don't have much use for religion, this Catholic nun hits the nail square on the head:
In those places, I forget for a moment that in the United States I live behind a wall that the world dare not penetrate. I forget for a while that we are a city under siege. I forget that I am going in and out of an armed camp called “the land of the free, the home of the brave.”
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Instead of working with moderate governments and the world community, instead of courting public opinion and international support, instead of trying to understand the U.S. image around the world and working to change it, instead of asking why gleeful children danced in the streets when the Twin Towers fell, instead of doing something positive to correct it, we fed right into it. We did the frontier thing and began to kill people ourselves. As in “That’ll show ’ em who’s boss.” Except that it hasn’t.

So what has it done?

By defining the attack on the Twin Towers as the declaration of global war, it has made global war a reality. As a result, it provides an excuse for any authoritarian government to call its dissenters “terrorists” and suppress them. So much for the freedom of speech we like to say we’re seeding around the world.

I really like Joan Chittister.

Written at 4:38 AM by Lynne.
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